-LRB- CNN -RRB- -- In 33 years with CNN , Jim Clancy has been almost everywhere and seen almost everything . That includes covering the aftermath of horrific commercial jet crashes , like Pan Am Flight 103 in Lockerbie , Scotland , and Swissair Flight 111 in Halifax , Nova Scotia .

It 's what he does . So naturally , when he got a call on March 8 that Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 had vanished , Clancy went to work .

After that first week , though , the veteran international journalist said it became evident this was n't your typical jet crash . That 's all the more obvious four weeks in as investigators do n't have the plane 's wreckage in hand . Nor do they have a fact-based explanation as to what happened .

Below , Clancy reflects on the story and what makes it so unique and baffling -- one that might take years to unravel .

QUESTION : What did you expect when you got the call and headed from Seoul to Kuala Lumpur ?

CLANCY : I 've covered various other air crashes that resulted in great loss of life . As I landed that Saturday in Kuala Lumpur , I thought -- as did most journalists -- that the biggest challenge to the story would be facing grieving families , having to interview and interact with them at what was almost certainly one of the worst times of their lives .

But I was certain the crash itself would be quickly explained , a search would quickly bring us to conclusions .

We expected the sadness and the sorrow from the families . We knew because there were so many people on board and so many different nationalities , that it would be a major story .

We expected it to be resolved in 72 hours .

QUESTION : When did you get the sense that would n't happen ?

CLANCY : Very early on , at the very first news conference they hinted that the plane may have tried to reverse course , make a `` turn back '' as they called it .

And I asked the head of the air force : A turn back 5 km , did it make it 10 km , 20 km ? And he said , I ca n't tell you that , I do n't know .

And then after that , that 's when we learned that it had flown hundreds of miles on radar .

QUESTION : What 's your take on Malaysia 's response , and the reaction to it ?

CLANCY : While this was not Malaysia 's first air tragedy , it was an unprecedented situation where a plane had gone missing -- not because something happened that forced it down , but because it abandoned its flight course and we do n't know why .

The officials here were really hard pressed to know what do , how to react , who was in charge .

From the very beginning , everybody wanted to know the answer to one question : Where is the plane ? What happened to my loved ones ? And why did it go off course ?

These are fundamental questions that would be asked by anyone . The problem was that Malaysian authorities did n't have any idea what the answer was to these questions . How could they ?

But that was seen by many as they must be covering something up , they must be hiding something .

It did n't help that the aircraft flew back across the Malay Peninsula undetected , they did n't scramble any jets and it simply flew away into the Indian Ocean . And it appeared at the time that their civil aviation and that their military aviation were n't talking to one another or had n't communicated with one another .

So the combination of multiple voices with no answers undermined any trust that the families had .

The Chinese , especially , were bitter . Internet chat rooms and news outlets pumped up the theories . They included accusations that the Malaysians may have shot down the plane and they are covering it all up , that there was a hijacking and the Malaysian government was negotiating with them and they were n't telling the families . China 's government allowed protests in Beijing against Malaysia 's embassy . The kind of protests China would never tolerate if its own government were the target .

-LRB- They fueled the idea -RRB- that somehow the Malaysian government was directly responsible for the fate of their relatives and was trying to deceive them .

QUESTION : What 's at stake for Malaysia ?

CLANCY : They knew they were overwhelmed , confused and sending mixed signals in the first week . They tried to do their best , but it was an unprecedented situation . Rivalries within the government may have contributed . Clearly there was some level of incompetence .

People forget that the United States on 9/11 did n't realize that those planes were going into the World Trade Center until the second one hit and the Pentagon had been hit . And that 's when -LRB- the United States -RRB- scrambled jets .

So here 's tiny Malaysia -- with no experience in any of this -- and they know that they screwed up , but they desperately wanted to show they could get it right . That 's why they brought in a PR firm and reorganized themselves to help get a single message out and to try to dispel the rumors that they were trying to cover something up . It 's a national airline . It 's national pride .

Their logic has been : If we find the plane and unravel what happened here , people will overlook the first few days of confusion and know we were never hiding something .

They did n't have any of the capabilities or any of the assets to find this plane . So they organized a huge effort for the region .

They also wanted this opportunity to shine . But again , they knew that they had to find the plane to make the whole thing work .

So that 's why they 're so dedicated ... They will happily spend the last dollar that Australia has to find this plane .

QUESTION : Why has this story resonated with so many people ?

CLANCY : This story has captured the world 's attention because no one can believe that a sophisticated airliner like the Boeing 777 with 239 people on board can simply vanish into thin air .

With no answers coming out of Kuala Lumpur , the internet went wild with speculation . Movie scripts started appearing online , there were attempts to crowdsource the search for the plane by looking at satellite photos . All kinds of images would pop up that you could n't trace .

Because there were no facts , you could make them up .

QUESTION : How do you approach a story like this ?

CLANCY : I 've never covered a story like this one that had so few facts and so much speculation in so many different directions .

Very quickly we saw chaos . Yes , the government was responsible for some of it . But Malaysia and the media danced down the road of contradiction and confusion together . Reporters misinterpreted what they were told . Sources misinterpreted what they were telling reporters . When I began to see it unfolding , I was more determined than ever to avoid speculation and conjecture about what happened to the plane . From what our sources were telling us , it was obvious they did n't have any real facts and there was no point in pretending we did , either . I was n't going to embrace some theory .

Once CNN broke the story this plane had flown out of the South China Sea , back across the Malay Peninsula , I understood this was a bizarre , unprecedented event . The outcome was unpredictable because almost anything was possible .

And so I kept convincing myself that evidence has to be coming . It has to be seen on a satellite , it has to be seen on a radar .

-LRB- And conspiracy theorists speculating about terrorism -RRB- never stopped themselves to ask the basic question of : Who did it ? Tell me who on board did it ? They could n't do that .

Some of these rumors persist . Some of them start in China , some of them have started with aviation buffs . But none of the theories have any evidence to back it up . It is such a mystery because we have so few facts .

QUESTION : What makes this story stand out for you , of all those big ones you 've covered ?

CLANCY : I 'm trying to think of a story that 's more baffling . I ca n't . With Lockerbie , Pan Am Flight 103 , they had the airplane . It was a mystery at first because they did n't know why it came down . But we knew we had the evidence there and we would be able to find out what caused it .

This case is far more baffling because we have a plane that reversed its flight path , traveled almost in a line to Antarctica and apparently stayed aloft until it ran out of fuel . That 's a plot ?

There 's been no claim of responsibility . There 's been no manifesto explaining any political motives or personal motives for anyone . How does a plane with a catastrophic mechanical malfunction go on to fly another seven hours ? And as we try to imagine what was going on aboard the aircraft this entire time , would the other crew members have just stood by and let the plane go off in the opposite direction ?

There 's a very good reason for our curiosity . There 's a very good reason for us to want to extend the resource necessary to unravel this mystery .

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CNN anchor Jim Clancy is a veteran international journalist

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He says it 's hard to `` think of a story that 's more baffling '' than the plane 's disappearance

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Clancy expected it would be resolved in 72 hours

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Four weeks later , the plane 's vanishing remains a mystery